Legal Analytics & Innovation Certificate

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The emerging field of legal analytics uses computing power to analyze text from legal documents, treating words more like numerical data. Computer algorithms, combined with the knowledge of data scientists and lawyers, can provide insights about what happened in the past and what may happen in the future. Demand for those who are familiar with the tools of legal analytics is high.

The Legal Analytics Certificate is a methods certificate, designed to provide additional training for students to bring their research and reasoning skills to bear in an array of areas.

Certificate Requirements

Required Courses

Students take 5-6 credits of required legal analytics courses:

LAW 7674 - Legal Analytics 3 Credit Hours

Legal Analytics Capstone Experience

As part of the required Capstone Experience, legal analytics students will integrate the diverse materials from their required and elective coursework to produce applied work or research in legal analytics. The Capstone Experience may be satisfied via a faculty-supervised independent study (capped at 2 credits) or by participation in the Applied Legal Analytics Lab (3 credits). The independent study Capstone Experience may satisfy the Legal Analytics writing requirement.

LAW 7676E - Applied Legal Analytics Lab. 3 Credit Hours
or
Independent Study of a Legal Analytics topic under faculty supervision 2 Credit Hours

Workshop Series

Students must complete one approved non-credit workshop series:

Currently, the only approved workshop series is the GSU Library Research Data Services “Data Certified” certificate. The workshop series provides courses on a variety of data-related topics, such as R, Python, Data Visualization, and similar.
The RDS workshop courses are free to take, and students receive the Data Certified micro-credential upon successful completion. Students must take five 2-hour workshops in either the summer/fall or the spring semesters to satisfy the requirement.
LAII workshop series (currently under development)

Elective Courses

Students will choose from a variety of approved electives to complete the 16 certificate hours. Some courses are two credits and some are three.

LAW 7139 - eDiscovery. 1 to 3 Credit Hours
LAW 7353 - Information Privacy Law 3 Credit Hours
LAW 7354 - Technology Law and Ethics 3 Credit Hours
LAW 7629 - LAW 7629 3 Credit Hours
LAW 7333 - Law Practice Technology. 2 to 3 Credit Hours
LAW 7135 - Cybersecurity Law and Policy 3 Credit Hours
LAW 7366 - Legal Innovation. 2 Credit Hours
LAW 7356 - Legal Technological Competency and Operations 2 Credit Hours
LAW 7065 - Antitrust Law. 2 to 3 Credit Hours

RCB MSDA Courses

(upon approval depending on background)

MSA 8010 - Data Programming for Analytics
MSA 8040 - Data Management for Analytics

Additional Courses

(upon approval)

We will work with students to treat additional seminars or upper-level classes as Certificate electives if there is significant overlap.

Writing Requirement

Students must complete a substantial writing project on a Legal Analytics & Innovation topic, which may also be used to satisfy the College of Law’s writing requirement.

Extracurricular Activity

Students are encouraged to participate in legal analytics extracurricular activities such as: workshops and boot camp training sessions hosted at the College of Law or Robinson College of Business, participate in additional client-focused data projects (“sprints”), work with affiliated faculty as a Graduate Assistant and/or pursue internship placements as they become available.

Grades

A minimum GPA of 3.00 is required across all courses taken in satisfaction of the certificate requirements, including the writing requirement. Honors will be awarded for achievement of a GPA of 3.60 or higher in all Legal Analytics & Innovation courses taken for the certificate.